Seriously. We’ve been played. The government allowed the telcos to take billions of dollars from residential phone users during the 90’s. In exchange, the telcos pledged to light up the nation and bring fiber to *every* home. Where’s that fiber now? Oh… right… The telcos defrauded the government and didn’t build a damn thing. (IOW, the telcos *lied* to us. Big surprise there, right?)

Comcast has been, for years now, been criticized for shutting people down who have used their connection excessively. And the problem is people were never told what the cap was, although it was rumored to be in the multiple of GBs per day.

The argument is if you know what the cap is, someone who is a light user will now become a heavy user and test the limits of the cap, which is stupid and assumes that every Comcast customer is a 14-year old boy.

Comcast may do a lot of things wrong, but let’s congratulate them on when they’re right. If you don’t like their internet service, switch.

]]>By: themindfantastichttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270863
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270863Comcast has done ‘for the time being’ a reasonably good thing. They came out with ‘unlimited’ and changed the TOS to sometimes cut off people without any sort of recourse, based on ‘excessive’ usage, which isn’t exactly ‘unlimited’ anymore. So people asked ‘Well is what is excessive?!?’ and they came out with a usage amount that was based on photos or songs or videos or emails, which is like comparing oranges to cats. Especially since every file has a different particular size and there is no real uniformity amongst it. This was speculated to be intentionally vague so they could keep the status quo. Now they have been caught fiddling with Torrents and the like and are getting slapped on the wrist by the FCC, but someone said okay lets be particular, and figured 250 gigs ‘SHOULD BE ENOUGH FOR ANYONE’. And it is, at the moment, but how long does that last?

Wasn’t it Bill Gates that once said 640k should be enough for anyone? Things change, and if comcast raises the bar when the bar needs a raising they might only have to deal with bad customer service reviews. This still doesn’t negate the whole ‘Net Neutrality’ thing, thats a whole other can of worms.

]]>By: Purlyhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-271129
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-271129When I work from home, it’s conceivable that I will need to download a 10 GB virtual machine every once and a while.
]]>By: BdgBillhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270879
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270879I have a 30 Gig download and 10 Gig upload limit on my account through Videotron in Montreal. Videotron made no attempt to hide the limits and did not call the service “unlimited”.

I am on the net for 8 hours a day, watch a good amount of streaming video, listen to hours of streaming audio daily and I have never come close to blowing my download cap.

It is hard to imagine a legitimate non-commercial use for over 250 gigs a month. Unless you are an enthusiastic collector of Linux distro’s the only way to go over this cap is by being a very heavy torrent user.

FYI – I think Comcast is one of the most evil companies operating in America.

Here in SÃ£o Paulo (Brazil’s biggest city), the cap is 120Gb on a 12mbits connection from Virtua – one of the *TWO* (yeah, only two) broadband providers available.

The cap is even more restrictive for slower connections (60Gb for 6mbits, 20Gb for 2mbits).

]]>By: bananachairhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270888
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270888I’m going to add my useless two cents to the long string of non-americans whose eyes light up at the thought of a 250gb cap, let alone capless internet access. Until about four days ago, the best internet access available to my address was 10gb at 256kb/s, for $60 a month. Now it’s up to a blistering 1500kb/s, still with the miserly 10 gig cap, for $70. No offpeak time, counting uploads and downloads, choked P2P speeds to boot.

So it’s hard to swallow Comcast being the root of all telecom evil for capping bandwidth at 250 gb. It’s not the end of the internet. I’m sure if anyone actually read the comments it’d put things in perspective.

]]>By: neWWavehttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270889
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270889No surprise. Comcast is easily one of the worst companies I’ve had to deal with. They have the market pretty much cornered as far as broadband goes and will do anything to squeeze the customer. There’s bound to be multiple “premium” and “deluxe” internet “packages” soon so you can pay more for more usage. Dropped their internet and phone and can’t wait to drop the cable if FiOS ever comes to town.
]]>By: Halhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270892
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270892I have a choice between AT&T, RCN and Comcast.
Not a big fan of any of those companies but at least there is a possibility of changing provider. Comcast might be a monopoly in some areas but not everywhere.
250Gb may seem adequate now but it will allow isps to charge a lot more for upgraded service as tech improves. Pretty soon we will be paying premium cable type fees for internet access and 250Gb will look like dialup.
]]>By: Drew from Zhrodaguehttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270893
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270893Here in Pittsburgh, as I mentioned yesterday, Comcast cut 4 channels from their analog television lineup. Now the cable package has one single channel above the federally mandated absolute minimum number of channels for the region: TBS. At least we get Family Guy. Don’t get me started with their digital offerings, as they mutilate the signal before they retransmit it — if the channel isn’t encrypted to begin with. The CSR assured me that they were a business, and that this was their business decision.

Now you’re telling me that they are specifying a cap on my ‘unlimited’ cable Internet?

Unfortunately for me, (the pathetic excuse that is) DSL is not available, FIOS is not available, and I can’t even get cable Internet from the competing company that serves people across the freaking street. There’s nobody to switch *to*.

Time to get together with the other WiFi enthusiasts. Oh wait…

]]>By: Takuanhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270638
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270638a warm up for the iPatriot Act
]]>By: Secret_Life_of_Plantshttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270642
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270642I’m sorry, but what does this mean? 250 gigs doesn’t seem like much to me and I don’t even really torrent things. Just downloading images and running my classes and doing the podcast thing etc. seems like it would take this much.

I am glad that I do not have Comcast.

Still, weren’t companies like Comcast given billions and billions of American tax-payer’s dollars in the 90s to upgrade the network infrastructure? And isn’t it the case that that money just disappeared and nothing was ever spent overhauling the system? I am pretty sure that I read something like this somewhere. Can we get our money back since obviously Comcast’s system is insufficient to our needs due to their negligent management of funds?

But if they do not give every user a meter so that we can track our usage any time we want, screw them.

(Personally I think that if they have to go through with metering everyone, they’ll use up more resources and money than they want and the whole issue will just quietly go away…. unless they have some specific targets in mind and are using the new rule to justify cutting them off through the legal department.)

]]>By: musicpsychhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270648
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270648I thought the point of broadband was to have more or less unlimited access (at least from my very limited non-technical point of view). To me, having a cap like Comcast is implementing is similar to going back to dialup.
]]>By: SamFhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270904
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270904I’m in the “this is not a bad thing” boat. This cap is being driven by the fact that there are some people out there who will use more than 250GB/month. And the way that cable modem technology works, these people interfere with the quality of the connections of those of us who are well under 250GB/month. So Comcast has 2 choices. They can either install new equipment on their end just to handle these few users, and spread the cost out over ALL of their customers, or they can put on a (pretty generous, at least for the next few years) cap and force the heavy users to either cut back, or pay for their own excess bandwidth. At least they’re now being up front about the fact that they don’t actually offer “unlimited” internet. I think Comcast has actually made a good choice here.

Of course, it doesn’t make up for all of their other monumentally bad choices and I won’t be switching back to them any time soon.

]]>By: Bobsledboyhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270649
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270649Big deal, most Australians don’t even have 100 gigs a month.
]]>By: travispulleyhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270650
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270650I’ve seen this story in a couple places now, and I’m concerned that this will affect me even though I don’t consider myself a “heaviest” user. I haven’t really looked, but there are some specifics I’d like to know:
1. Is this combined upstream AND downstream? Does it matter if it’s used during peak times?
2. What penalties would I face for exceeding the limit?
]]>By: Ceronomushttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270653
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270653Can someone put this in perspective for me? I mean, this seems like quite a bit of usage really. I mean, if I come to Boing Boing every day, how much bandwidth is that?
]]>By: jerwinhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270910
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270910250 GB seems really generous, for now. But this might well be an anticompetitive move. iTunes programs are already half a gigabyte for 47 minutes of “SD” resolution. How much more for a HD movie? Will this tend to force customers away from NetFlix and AppleTV and back to Comcast’s on demand services?

@A New Challenger: I have wasted many hours on you tube. It’s a great service. But sometimes it’s just a tad blocky for my taste. If I had the bandwidth (I don’t), and HD content was available (it isn’t, to my knowledge) I’d gladly take advantage of it.

Internet audio used to be 56Kbs realaudio. Now, it’s 128Kbs MP3. Live video is also available. MacOSX updates used to be 20 megabytes at most. Now, they’re closer to 150 megabytes. Content demands will expand to fill the available bandwidth.

]]>By: Jarvik7http://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270655
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270655I WISH I had a 250GB cap. With resnet at my university dorm we get a maximum of 5GB per week. When I go home it’s a max of 60-100GB per month (combined up/down) and that’s WITH the top-level packages offered by the ISP duopolies.
]]>By: Man On Pink Cornerhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270657
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270657#2: 250 GB is a hell of a lot of data. They are charging you less per month to transfer the data than it would cost you to store it.

Anyone moving more data than that around should be paying for a higher-grade connection. Otherwise normal users are effectively subsidizing them.

]]>By: Little Johnhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270659
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270659Ceronomus @ #6:
It depends on whether you just read the BB posts when they’re fresh, read and re-read them when they’ve become heavily commented, or (heaviest of all) viewed Takuan’s comment history even once.
]]>By: A New Challengerhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270660
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-27066010 minute YouTube videos are roughly 100 megabytes. If you watch two hours of Youtube vids a day for a whole month that’s about 36 gigs.

I don’t know what online gaming uses, or what just viewing web pages daily for oh 4-5 hours would use up, but given that video is the most bandwidth-hungry application I can think of, I think I agree with Man On Pink Corner, certainly on his first point.

At least there’s a disclosure now.

]]>By: Matt Jhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270663
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270663That seems an entirely reasonable cap to me. 250GB is an awful lot of data to transfer over a residential connection. If they advertised plans with this cap as unlimited though, that’s a different issue.
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-271175
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-271175I’m sure no one’s going to read this all the way down here… but really, it’s not all that hard to rack up this kind of bandwidth, regardless of how big your harddrive is.

Youtube videos, everything you surf on the web, VOIP calls, online gaming, remote desktop programs, video conferencing, online radio, and dozens of other things take up huge amounts of bandwidth without touching your harddrive… You may not realize it, but you’re passing massive amounts of data over your internets, without actually accumulating anything on your computer.

I’m able to get download speeds of 1 megabyte per second,.. someone higher in the thread mentioned you’d need to download at 100kbps all day every day to achieve this, well I’d only need to download for two hours a day…

Yesterday I downloaded and installed debian linux. It was comprised of three DVD images at 4.5gb each, and once I’d installed them I needed to do a partial dist-upgrade through the system updates thing, downloading another few gigs. On my laptop I was letting some streaming music play, while my roommate played xbox live. I have absolutely no doubt I transfered 20gb yesterday, I’d have that 250gb used up in a week or two.

]]>By: alisong76http://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270668
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270668I’m Australian, and most of my workmates are astonished when I tell them I fork out for a big plan and get 60 a month. However, they somehow always come sidling up to me whenever they want the newest episodes of whatever hot show they’re hooked on. I think half the people in my office had already seen Dexter by the time it aired here (Oi, networks, TAKE THE HINT. You make us wait, we’re going to go elsewhere).

I don’t even know what I’d do with 250 gig. I am never short on stuff to watch, and it’s not thanks to free to air TV or cable. I do that I’m the only person in the household – it might be a different story if there were more than one person using the account.

]]>By: bloodyforkhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-271186
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-271186Please tell me someone is now attempting to disguise regular traffic as VOIP or some similar comcast service that does not count towards a monthly limit.
]]>By: Simon Bradshawhttp://boingboing.net/2008/08/28/comcast-limits-custo.html#comment-270676
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-270676250 GB/month equates to 100kB/s all day, every day. Only a few years ago that would have involved getting the phone company to install fifteen extra land lines, putting a 56kbps (i.e. 7kB/s) modem on each, and paying for fifteen phone lines to be in use all the time. (Mux’ing together fifteen serial inputs is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Compare that to the cost of a broadband connection, and a cap of 250 GB (beyond which I imagine you pay more and/or get your connection throttled) doesn’t seem so unreasonable.